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Jurisprudence II presentation

Sherry Fahimi, Giovanna Longobardo

Chapter 8, Page 681

Richard Delgados essay on Derrick Bells article

Derrick Bells toolkit- fit to dismantle that famous house?

Richard Delgado critiques Derrick Bells article on racial progress. Delgado disagrees with Bell.

Bluebeard Castle is a French fairy tale about a nobleman who marries a series of women and keeps them

away to his castle. Judith, his fourth wife, in hope to touch his heart with humanizing power of her love,

marries him despite familys warnings. Once in the sunless windowless castle, she finds a few locked

doors and persuades him to open them in hope of some sign of life. She discovers horrifying instruments

of torture and in the final room, where she fears to find previous three wives dead bodies, she finds all

three quite alive and in decorated in jewels. Bluebeard drapes her with jewels and leaves her behindclosed doors.

For Bell, Judiths fate is an analogy for blacks hopes and fears and a metaphor for American racial

progress. Judith entertains a vision of an ideal life with Bluebeard and despite warnings, takes risks to

achieve it. When finally allowed access to the castle, she recognizes it for what it is- in analogy as Bell

recognizes the reality of persistently racist country. Despite her growing realization, she clings to the

faith that her marriage can succeed, just as civil rights activists once clung to the hope of a better world.

The cycle of curiosity, hope, revelation, and disappointment are similar characteristics of Bluebeard

castle and black history. These four wives remind us the fate of people who fail to grasp their situation

or who listen to dreamers who tell them that salvation lies just around the corner.

Bell believes Judith could have avoided her predicament by staying home and tending her garden, as he

suggests African Americans to foreswear integration and settle instead for building strong black

communities.

Delgado disagrees. He argues, Judith need not abjure love entirely but instead seek it with a different

suitor.

Dichotomous quality: traditional civil rights thinking deems a single group paradigmatic, with the

experiences and concerns of other groups receiving attention only insofar as they may be analogized to

those of this group. This binary thinking accompanies exceptionalism, the belief that ones group is inn

fact so unusual as to justify special treatment.

-The history of minority groups in America reveals that while one group is gaining ground, another is

often losing it. Example: US waged a bloody war against Mexico yet only a few years later freed the

slaves. Around same time US passed the Dawes Act which resulted in the loss of nearly two-thirds of

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Indian lands and then passed the Chinese exclusion act. Therefore, goodwill toward one group does not

necessarily translate into the same for others.

-Binary thinking not only conceals the checkerboard of racial progress, it can also hide the way dominant

society casts minority groups against one another, to the detriment of both. Example: during Californias

proposition 187, proponents gained black votes by portraying Mexican immigrants as competitors forblack jobs.

-Sometimes the pitting of one minority group against another, inherent in binary approaches to race,

takes the form of exaggerated identification with whites at the expense of other groups. Example: early

in Mississippis history, Asians tried to be declared white so they could attend schools for whites.

-Binary thinking can also impair moral insight and reasoning for whites. Example: Justice John Harlan

author of Plessy v. Ferguson. Also Earl Warren who supported civil rights for blacks and an end to

segregation of Asian and Mexican schoolchildren, was a proponent of removing Japanese Americans to

concentration camps during WWII.

- Binary thinking can easily allow one to believe that America made only one mistake_ for example,

slavery. Therefore in order to redress that mistake by making its victims whole, the concerns of other

groups would only come into play if they resemble in kind and seriousness, that one great mistake.

Author says: the truth is that all the groups are exceptional; each has been racialized in different ways;

none is the paradigm or template for the others. Blacks were enslaved. Indians were massacred and

then removed to the west. Japanese Americans were relocated in the other direction. The matrix of

race and racialization is constantly shifting, sometimes overlapping for the four main groups.

-binary thinking can also warp minorities views of themselves and their relation to whites. As social

scientists know, Caucasians occasionally select a particular minority group as a favorite, usually a small,

non-threatening one, and make that group overseers of the others or tokens to rebut any inference that

the dominant group is racist.

-the siren song of specialness may also predispose a minority group to believe that it is uniquely

victimized and entitled to special consideration from iniquitous whites.

-binary thinking and exceptionalism also impair the ability to learn from history, they doom one to

reinvent the wheel.

-dichotomous thought impairs the ability of groups to forge useful coalitions. Example: NAACP or any

other African American organization did not file amicus brief to challenge Japanese case ofKorematsu v.

United States.

Sometimes minority groups do set aside differences and work together successfully. Example: Chinese

and Spanish speaking parents challenged monolingual instruction in San Francisco.

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Authors suggestions: minority groups in the United States should consider abandoning all binaries,

narrow nationalism, and strategies that focus on cutting the most favorable possible deal with whites,

and instead set up a secondary market in which they negotiate selectively with each other. Example:

Latinos may offer a bargain to African Americans. That bargain may be an agreement on the part of the

latter group to support Latinos with respect to an issue important to them such as easing immigration

restrictions or supporting bilingual education in public schools-in return for their own promise not to

pursue quite so intently rollbacks in affirmative action or set-asides for black contractors. This approach

would reduce the number of times minorities approach whites hat in hand.